The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched court action earlier this year against the airline claiming Qantas sold tickets on 8000 flights on its website for an average of more than two weeks, and in some cases for up to 47 days, after the cancellation of the flights.

It was also alleged that, for more than 10,000 flights scheduled to depart in May to July 2022, Qantas did not notify existing ticketholders that their flights had been cancelled for an average of about 18 days, and in some cases for up to 48 days.

But the airline claimed the ACCC’s case ignored reality and rejected the “ghost flight” claim because people who paid for a flight were given a flight or a refund.

“This was not a case of fee for no service,” the airline said.

“As we’ve said from the start of this case, we fully acknowledge that the period examined by the ACCC was extremely difficult for our customers.”

It said it cancelled thousands of flights in the period because of staff shortages and supply chain issues which coincided with “huge pent-up demand”.

It said cancelled flights were left on sale because of system limitations and the number of flights involved, but the cancellations were made well in advance of travel.

“While managing this is not a problem in normal times, the sheer scale of the changes we were dealing with during this period meant that some flights flights remained on sale _ as the ACCC case flags _ for 48 hours or more after they were cancelled,” Qantas said.

“Some of the longer delays were due to human error and process failures.

“While we restarted safely we got many other things wrong. For that we have sincerely apologised.

“In purely legal terms, the ACCC case ignores a fundamental reality and a key condition that applies when airlines sell a ticket.

“While all airlines work hard to operate flights at their scheduled times, no airline can guarantee that. That’s because the nature of travel _when weather and operational issues mean delays and cancellations are inevitable and unavoidable _makes guarantees impossible.”

It said in relation to the specific claims by the ACCC, all impacted domestic customers were offered same-day flights and 98 per cent of international customers were offered flights within a day of the scheduled flight.

It said there were delays and but it did not equate to a fee for no service.

The airline said that in most cases the delays between it making the decision to cancel a flight and notifying customers allowed Qantas time to find them an alternative.